“Some people cannot love you the way you want to be loved, because they are emotionally and spiritually frozen. They recoil from or avoid affection. You will never meet a deep penetrating gaze from their shallow eyes; only a surface glance. They will touch your hand with their hand, but never with their heart. They will serve your body but not your soul.

They can only connect with you through utility, but never passion. If you need cupcakes or a jar opened, they are perfect; if you need compassion or wisdom, you are all alone. They are only a person as society made them, not as nature intended them.

They live life so perfectly, but know nothing of life at all. They did everything they were told to be a good person, but are hardly a person at all. They are empty. They are dead inside. They will break your heart if you let them. They are usually very judgmental. They see themselves as nice but are often mean and cold. They feel themselves superior. They think everything they do is exactly the way it is supposed to be done. They are repeaters. They lack original thought. If you challenge their slumber with awakened thoughts, they will panic and flee. They will make you feel crazy because they only believe what the masses believe. They are the embodiment of the masses, because they have not become their own individual person. Individuation is an attainment of spiritual maturity — frighteningly seldom attained in today’s world. You cannot change these people. They are trapped inside of themselves; stunted.

You will waste your whole life waiting for them to wake-up to the treasure of what you have to offer. You cannot snap them out of their sleep. Only a tragic event will awaken them.”— Bryant McGill

I just read this article in the Harvard Business Review. There is much for me to ponder on:

Leaders have always shown their mettle in times of liminality. The term comes from Arnold van Gennep, the Belgian anthropologist who first outlined the common patterns in how cultures mark transitions from one human state to another (for example, from adolescence to adulthood). In his 1909 book The Rites of Passage he described three stages of separation from one world and entry into another. The liminal (or threshold) stage is central. Commenting later on van Gennep’s work, anthropologist Victor Turner explained it as “a moment when those being moved in accordance with a cultural script were liberated from normative demands, when they were, indeed, betwixt and between successive lodgments in jural political systems. In this gap between ordered worlds almost anything may happen.”

Organizations must also periodically go through such wrenching times of transition, and it is during such liminal times that leaders have their greatest impact. They must manage to both craft the new world with smart strategy, often in the wake of disruption, and cause the organization to embrace the required change. Lou Gerstner’s arrival at IBM in 1993 is a classic example of leadership through a liminal period. Parachuted in to salvage a beleaguered organization, he pushed the company toward a new way of thinking, ultimately growing IBM’s value and revenues by more than 40 percent.

Another key passage is this:

Times of liminality are disconcertingly chaotic; therefore, a leader’s job is to provide some firm footing for people, with assurances of what will not keep changing. Gerstner did this with his clear and consistent view of where IBM needed to go, and Lafley did it with his reassertion of bedrock values. Great leaders also act as mentors, providing counsel and coaching to the people in the organization during various stages of transition. And perhaps the ultimate work of leaders in times of organizational change is to ensure high engagement levels.

I few months ago at the end of a retreat I was told that I was in a liminal space. I have wondered what this means in my own leadership? Much of what I thought I would be leading in no longer there. But, while I continue to breathe it’s not over yet.

Like what Seth Godin says to do:

Make two lists. One that lists all your obstacles:

The defects in your family situation, the criticisms your work has received lately. It is a list of people who have better luck than you and moments you’ve been shafted and misunderstood.

Then the other is the good stuff:

The lucky breaks, the advantages, the good feedback, your trusted network. It talks about the accident of being born in the right time and the right place, your health, your freedom. It features your education, your connection to the marketplace and just about every nice thing someone has said about you in the last week or month.

People say that fame is important, but in the end it really isn’t. People say that wealth is important, but in the end it really isn’t. My ex-wife had a father who was in the tombstone business. I’ve seen a lot of tombstones. None of ’em have net worth on ’em. It’s the people you develop. That’s what you remember when you get to be my age.

Responsibility: A detachable burden easily shifted to the shoulders of God, Fate, Fortune, Luck or one’s neighbor.In the days of astrology it was customary to unload it upon a star. ~Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary, 1911

Why do children want to grow up? Because they experience their lives as constrained by immaturity and perceive adulthood as a condition of greater freedom and opportunity. But what is there today, in America, that very poor and very rich adolescents want to do but cannot do? Not much:they can “do” drugs, “have” sex, “make” babies, and “get” money (from their parents, crime, or the State). For such adolescents, adulthood becomes synonymous with responsibility rather than liberty. Is it any surprise that they remain adolescents?~Thomas Szasz

It happened during the period in my life when I was completing an apprenticeship as a fitter and turner. This was one of the worst periods in my life because of the way that I was treated during this time. One very distinct memory that has always stayed with me was when I received the initiation rite of a first year apprentice.

I will never forget being stripped naked in front of a large group of men and covered in a concoction of grease, marking blue, iron filings and other unmentionable items. The main area that they focused on was putting it on my genitals. After they had finished I was left to walk over to the toilet block and try and clean myself up as best as possible. Then I had to walk several kilometres home while to try and clean myself up.

This really was the beginning of a four year process where I was continually berated in front of the other workers. Where I was continually told that my work was not up to scratch. Where I was told that I would never make it through my apprenticeship, where I was given the most horrible jobs to see if there was some way that they could force me to quit my job.

I remember working as hard as I could day after day in the hope that at best I would just be left alone. The last thing that I ever expected was to receive any praise for my work. But no matter how hard I tried or how hard I worked or no matter how good the job I had done it was never good enough.

This was my experience day after day for four years. I would lay awake at night dreading the next day’s work. Then I would wake up in the early hours of each day dreading in anticipation what would happen to me that day.

I never knew how much my early work experience had affected me until a while later. I left my apprenticeship as soon as my time was up. I then traveled overseas where I found that I was a hard worker.

When I came back I worked for a cotton farmer near my home town for a while. I was taught a hard lesson there by one of the other workers. On any job things will go wrong and in farming there were always things to fix and things that were breaking down.

One day when something went wrong with thej ob that we were doing he said to one of the workers in front of me, “have you noticed that Chris always blames someone else when something goes wrong?”

I really didn’t like what he said, but I realized what he said was true. As a result of how I had been treated as an apprentice I always felt the need to justify any mistake. I made a decision from that day on that I would take responsibility when something was my fault. I even realized that taking responsibility meant taking the blame when I wasn’t at fault.

I think that this is the most valuable lessons that I have ever learned. In making this decision I made a choice to never again be a victim. That I would be able to be accountable and accept the fact that I wouldn’t always get everything right what was important was that I did my best.

What happened to me had nothing to do with my circumstances. I have made lots of mistakes and been in lots of situations where I would like to blame someone else for what has gone wrong in my life. I took a step to change something inside of me that gave me a different perspective on my circumstances.

Most of us have probably heard of the experiment that a guy called Pavlov conducted with some dogs. He trained the dogs to remember that every time he rang a bell that they would be fed. Once they thought they were going to be fed they would start salivating. He repeated this so many times that he only had to ring the bell and the dogs would start salivating.

This highlights one of the key differences between us and the animal kingdom. We are able to change because we have the capability of an inner change. Yes we can also have our behaviour modified because of external circumstances. But, there is also a potential for something more powerful in the way we change to take place in our lives when we choose to be involved in an inner change. We allow for the possibility to become new people no longer dragged down by our past choices. When we change in this way we open a door for new horizons that will move us past all our previous limitations.